As promised, here is the slide deck from my recent presentation at Chicago Ideas Week on the Windows Phone Application Platform. Also included are the links for downloading the Windows Phone SDK and tools, getting started with the Starter Kits as well as key resources to help you through your app development on Windows Phone.

Resources:

• Download the Windows Phone SDK and Tools
• Register for the AppHub
• Get Started with the Starter Kits: WordPress, School, Augmented Reality
• Delve into the Key Resources

Starting this Friday, July 9, the months of tireless work of a few of your peers in the Midwest developer community and led by my co-hort, Clark Sell, developers and charities will come together for a marathon coding event pitting the skills of geeks along with the needs of a few charities to produce something special. Many smaller charities don’t have access to people with the technical skills to drive the needs of the charity in today’s modern setting. Whether its maintaining an operations contact management system of volunteers and philanthropists to a simple website to help advertise the great work the charity provides. As developers, we code as part of our day job, we code when we get home, we code (or at least think about) when we’re on vacation; we’d code in our sleep if we could – and some of us can! (I have stories) GiveCamp brings the talents and the inherent desire to JUST CODE together with the needs of local charities to do something great and give back to the community.

The GiveCamp effort was dreamed up by my colleague down in Dallas, Chris Koenig, and with the help of his technical community in Dallas, they kicked off the GiveCamp concept and now we’re seeing GiveCamps pop up all over the US. We figured it was high time we brought one to Chicago.

As I said, with the tireless effort of a few of our peers in the Midwest technical community and through the leadership of Clark Sell, Midwest Give Camp will be taking place this weekend (July 9-11) at the Microsoft offices in Downers Grove. Some of the charities participating in the first Midwest GiveCamp include: Bear Necessities Pediatric Cancer Foundation, Sit Stay Read, Porchlight – Solutions to Homelessness, Dreams for Kids, The Caregiver Connection, and Bridges to Digital Excellence.

If you could set aside your summer for one weekend and give your skills to a charity who needs it, your simple effort would go a LONG way.

For more information and to register as a volunteer, please visit http://MidwestGiveCamp.org.

UPDATE: The jobs have been filled.

I don’t typically throw a job posting up on my blog. This a first and will *certainly* be the last. There are better sites and resources to help connect developers will employers, however this one is a special case.

An old friend of mine (well, he’s not old, we just go way back) is part owner of an exiting and fast-growing startup seeking some highly skilled .NET developers with a penchant for leadership. You can find all of the details on each position below. If you fit the job requirements to a tee, I’d suggest getting your resume in to the fold as quickly as possible. I don’t suspect these positions will be open long.  Good luck!

Job Openings:

• Director of Application Development
• Manager of Application Development

Every couple of weeks, we supply some notes, thoughts or announcements around the happenings in the developer community which is than posted as part of the “From the Editor” section of the MSDN Flash newsletters. Recently our “From the Editor” section was buried behind a link. For that reason, I will cross-post that entry here. I want to make sure you all have the information on what’s happening in the developer community. Enjoy.

.NET Communities in the Virtual World

Here in the Midwest, we have a great offering of .NET user group communities. However, there are still developers spread throughout the area that can’t find a user group within a reasonable driving distance of their home and work. Fear not, geographically-challenged developers, as there are a number of user group communities popping up on several social sites on the Web.

For those of you looking for a truly virtual experience you can join up with the Second Life .NET Developers User Group. I’ve had the privilege of presenting a couple of sessions for SLDNUG (see Virtual CodeFest Wrap-up), and it was truly a great experience. There’s a little bit of a learning curve in navigating the Second Life waters, but once you get the hang of it, it’s a great opportunity to join fellow developers in the virtual world.

Also on tap in the social space for .NET developers is the Linked .NET Developers Group on LinkedIn, where they have over 21,000 members! Coming up on April 30th, the Linked group has Brian Harry, the father of Team Foundation Server, scheduled to discuss what’s coming in TFS 2010 ("Rosario").

Let’s not leave out Facebook. The .NET Programmers Group on Facebook has a number of events on schedule, including Virtual User Groups and Cloudism, Coding4Fun: Building a Video Game with XNA Game Studio 3.0, and Using Templates in Silverlight to Change the Look and Feel of Controls.

As you can see, there are plenty of opportunities to participate in the .NET community no matter where you pull up your keyboard.

Event Season Kicks into Gear
Spring is in the air, and the community conference season is kicking into high gear. We have a number of great events coming to the area for you to learn all the latest in the Microsoft platform world.

We start off with XAMLFest, coming to Chicago on April 29 – 30. XAMLFest is a two-day interactive event where you’ll learn about the platforms, tools and processes used to deliver differentiated user experiences. It’s a chance for you to mingle with user experience-minded Microsoft folks and industry leading design firms and design integrators. Discussions will revolve around technologies such as WPF and Silverlight, along with tools such as Expression Blend. To register send an e-mail to xamlfest-chicago@live.com with your name and e-mail address. Registration is limited, so register early. We do ask that you register only if you know that you can attend both days of the event. More information about XAMLFest is available on John Pelak’s blog.

Next up, we have RIApalooza Two coming to Chicago for its 2nd year. RIApalooza promises a platform-agnostic and PowerPoint-free zone where you can join fellow RIA enthusiasts to discuss the current state and the future of RIA technologies. It is for designers, developers, and just about anyone interested in learning about the platforms, technologies, and techniques used to build RIAs. It takes place in downtown Chicago on May 8. Head over to riapalooza.com for the latest information and registration information.

There are also a couple of code camps and a Day of .NET on the calendar for May. First, the Fox Valley .NET Users Group is holding a Day of .NET on May 9th in Appleton, WI.

Next, we have the Indianapolis .NET Developers Association, who are sponsoring another code camp for the developer community in (where else?) Indianapolis on May 16th. Find all of the details at indycodecamp.com.

Rounding out the event announcements, the Chicago ALT.NET group is hosting a code camp for the Chicagoland area on May 30th in Grayslake, IL. This is a great location to bring in developers from both the Chicagoland area as well as our friends up around Milwaukee. These code camps are not limited to the .NET community; they’re for the larger developer community as a whole. The organizers are looking for speakers who can bring their skill sets from the Java, Ruby, Python communities, and more. To submit a session and to register for the event, head over to chicagocodecamp.com.

Windows 7 App Compatibility Lab
The ISV Evangelism team invites all ISVs to attend the upcoming Windows 7 App Compatibility Lab in Chicago taking place from April 20th to April 24th. The purpose of these half-day, complimentary labs is to assist ISVs in verifying that their applications will perform on Windows 7, and to provide feedback to the Windows product group as issues arise. As an attendee, you will have the opportunity to work with Microsoft technology architects while gaining an understanding of how to manage and optimize your product in a Windows 7 environment.

I caught this coming over the Twitter wire from fellow (although Canadian – Aye!) Developer Evangelist, John Bristowe.

Christian Heilmann, Yahoo Web Evangelist, pretty much wraps up the work we all do in 181 slides.